BRITAIN, EUROPE... THE WORLD!

Exeter chief wants double-winning ‘nowhere men’ to be the best team on earth

EXETER chairman Tony Rowe has demanded his double-winning club kick on again and become champions of the world.

Rowe was one of the lucky few at Twickenham to see Chiefs add the Premiership title to the Champions Cup won seven days before.

Becoming just the fourth English club to win both in a single season put the lid on Exeter’s rise from nowhere men to kings of the Continent.

But Rowe (right, holding both of the trophies) immediately ripped it off and challenged the cream of Devon to rise even higher.

“We need to establish ourselves as the premier club,” said the former Royal Marine.

“I want to be the premier club in the world, and we can do that. We’ve got ambitious guys here.” There has long been talk of a clash of the hemispheres, either taking the form of rugby league’s World Club Challenge between the champions of north and south, or a Club World Cup.

Nothing has come of it but Rowe clearly fancies the idea of pitting his Chiefs against, say, Super Rugby champions Crusaders of New Zealand.

He said: “After we won the Prem for the first time in 2017 I said we’d do Europe in five years. How about we do the world in the next five?”

Even to utter those words shows how far the club has come since Rowe received a phone call 27 years ago inviting him to sponsor an advertising board.

Exeter played at the ramshackle County Ground, which doubled as a dog track, in the third tier of English rugby. Rowe turned up, was shown into the VIP lounge, which he remembers being

“worse than the worst transport cafe you’ve ever seen”, and quickly realised Chiefs were headed nowhere without help.

He became their sponsor, dreamed up the Millennium Club, half a dozen tables offering matchday hospitality, and five years later took over the running of the business. By 2006 he had sold the ground and moved Chiefs to Sandy Park. Four years later they reached the Premiership and now they rule the roost - and have a hotel nearing completion.

Even a storm of biblical proportions could not rain on their parade at Twickenham where Henry Slade’s classy try and the unerring boot of Joe Simmonds saw them to victory.

Defeat was hard to take for Wasps who turned down a late kick to force extra time to try to win with a try - only to fluff the all-important lineout.

Attention now turns to the t international game, and Rowe R has warned England not n to over burden his players. p

“All this stuff coming d down about more i international games - I’m t totally against that,” he said. “We employ the players, they a are our club players.

“The reality is we bred these guys for ourselves, we didn’t breed them for England. England can get too greedy. We don’t get compensated enough.”

EXETER - Try: Slade. Con: J Simmonds. Pens: J Simmonds 4.

WASPS - Try: Umaga. Con: Gopperth. Pen: Gopperth 2.